When Powell River Community Foundation’s Vital Signs report was released last October, community leaders and residents were worried about the city’s high levels of child poverty, poverty in general, unemployment and lack of affordable housing options, among the other problems it identified. And rightly so.
Now, thanks to funding from a Job Creation Partnership grant and sponsorship from Powell River Diversity Initiative, a project called Tapping the Groundswell will bring the community together to tackle these tough social problems head on.
A two-day conference, which takes place April 1 and 2 at Powell River Recreation Complex and is open to everyone, will be a convergence of ideas and potential solutions to the serious problems faced by this community.
When Tapping the Groundswell project supervisor John Young moved to Powell River, he brought with him more than two decades’ experience working on social-change initiatives, including as director of communications and outreach with Oxfam Canada in Ottawa. Young and his team’s dedication to this conference and the ongoing project has been steadfast, and for that they should be congratulated.
Sometimes it is easy to ignore or even shun societal ills such as poverty and homelessness, but in reality these are problems that could affect any one of us, given the circumstances.
The rate of child poverty in our area alone is exceptionally alarming and the upcoming conference is a positive step to address the issue and work on possible solutions.
No one expects our community’s problems to be solved over a weekend conference, but thank goodness the Tapping the Groundswell team has identified the need for community discussion, and provided a conduit for all of us to come together and talk frankly about our area’s social ills.
When you get a group of people in a room with the intent of working together to help their community, amazing things can happen. Ideas quickly bounce off each other and the kinetic energy of a community becomes immediately apparent. Everyone offers to help in their own way, however large or small.
Tapping the Groundswell will not be the answer to Powell River’s problems, but it might be the key to unlocking the power we hold as a community, continually willing to help each other in our times of need.
Jason Schreurs, publisher/editor
